Saturday, March 24, 2012

If Christ knew all things, why was his soul troubled?

5th
Sunday of Lent, John 12:20-33

Jesus
said, “I am troubled now. Yet what should I say? ‘Father, save me from this
hour?’ But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour.”

In both options for the Gospel
this Sunday (whether from year B, on the Son of Man being glorified and raised
up on the Cross so as to draw all men to himself; or from year A for RCIA, on
the raising of Lazarus from the dead), Christ is deeply troubled and intensely
sorrowful.

Our Savior truly suffered not
only in his body but in his soul. Our Lord was profoundly acquainted with
grief. Both the thought of his own death and also of the death of his friend
Lazarus make our Lord to offer prayers
and supplications with loud cries and tears (Hebrews 5:7).

But, if Christ’s soul was
troubled, how can the Church claim that our Savior knew all things?

Christ
knew all things and enjoyed the beatific vision

We are not here going to defend
the traditional belief that Jesus, in his human intellect, knew all created
things (and also a good number of the possible worlds which could have been
created). Neither will we put forward all the reasons why Christians must
affirm that our Lord enjoyed the beatific vision.

Rather, the point of this post
will be to respond to the most common objection to the perfection of our Savior’s
human knowledge and beatific vision – namely, as they say “because Christ was sorrowful and cried out in anguish,
he could not possibly have enjoyed the perfect fruition of the beatific vision.”

Two important Magisterial
texts:

The following proposition is rejected: “The opinion cannot
be declared certain, which holds that the soul of Christ was ignorant of nothing but from the
beginning knew in the Word everything,
past, present and future, that is to say everything which God knows with the ‘knowledge of vision’.” (Pope Benedict
XV, Decree of the Holy Office of 1918)

“The knowledge and love of our Divine Redeemer, of which we
were the object from the first moment of His Incarnation, exceed all the human
intellect can hope to grasp. For hardly was He conceived in the womb of the
Mother of God, when He began to enjoy the
beatific vision, and in that vision all the members of His Mystical Body
were continually and unceasingly present to Him, and He embraced them with His
redeeming love.” (Pope Pius XII, Mystici
Corporis 75)

For those interested in further
reading, consider the following articles:

Why Jesus had to know all things [here];
That Jesus knew the day and the hour of the final judgment, and he knew all
things [here];
Perfect knowledge does not make Jesus less human [here].

Christ
suffered in both his body and his soul

Sacred Scripture clearly
affirms that our Savior did indeed truly suffer in both his body and in his
soul. Indeed, that he suffered in his body should be obvious to all – he even
fell several times under the weight of the heavy Cross.

But that he suffered in his
soul requires some explanation. Our Savior did not suffer inordinate or sinful
desires in his soul, both because he is God and because he was subject neither
to sin nor to the effects of sin (namely, concupiscence).

Thus, while our souls are often
troubled by disordered desires, lust, greed, envy, etc., and also by memories
of past sins, the soul of our Savior was in no way troubled by such defects.

However, St. Thomas Aquinas
affirms that the human soul of Christ was truly troubled during his life on
earth, before the Resurrection. While there was certainly no ignorance in
Christ, there was sensible pain in his soul, together with sorrow, fear, wonder
or astonishment, and just anger. (cf. ST III, q.15, aa. 3-9 [here])

Let us focus specifically on the
sorrow and fear in Christ’s soul, considering how it can be that these
realities co-existed with the beatific vision and in no way hindered the
perfection of our Savior’s joy.

Christ’s
fear did not proceed from ignorance

Both sorrow and fear are caused
by the apprehension of evil: Sorrow, from the recognition of a present evil;
fear, of a future evil.

Now, fear is not so much about
a future evil which is certain and unavoidable – such an evil causes not fear,
but rather sorrow; for we fear only that which he have some hope of avoiding.
And those future evils which we recognize as certain do not arouse fear, but
rather sorrow insofar as they are (by reason of their certainty) considered as
an evil in the present.

Fear may be considered in two
ways: First, as a natural instinct such that (for example) a man naturally
shrinks from the possibility of future bodily injury. In this way, fear was
present in the soul of Christ.

In a second way, fear may be
considered in relation to the uncertainty of the future event (as when we hear
something in the night and are uncertain as to what made the sound and fear
what may come next). In such a respect, fear was not and could not possibly be
in the soul of our Savior.

Because the Lord knew all
things, he knew with certainty that he would suffer upon the Cross and he knew
that he would not avoid this suffering. In this respect, we say that Christ was
filled with sorrow rather than with fear.

Christ
suffered true sorrow

Sorrow is caused (as we said
above) by the apprehension of a present evil. Now, Christ’s soul could
apprehend evils as being hurtful to himself (e.g. his passion and death) and
also as being hurtful to others (e.g. the sins of men). In both respects,
Christ our God had true sorrow.

However, sorrow was not in
Christ in such a way as to disturb his reason. In other words, our Lord was
never overcome with sorrow so as to grieve inordinately or excessively. Rather,
our Lord’s sorrow was always perfectly regulated by reason.

And hence we make a distinction
between the higher and lower powers of the soul. In the lower parts of the
soul, those dealing most directly with sense experience and the passions,
Christ did indeed experience both true sorrow and fear. It was the lower part
of Christ’s soul that was troubled.

In the higher parts of our
Savior’s soul, the Lord experienced the perfect joy of the beatific vision.
Here there was no trouble or disturbance, but all was well ordered and perfect.

It was only by a special decree
of God that the glory and joy of the beatific vision which so filled these
higher realms of the Savior’s soul did not overflow into his soul’s lower
portions as well as into his body. Such occurred perfectly only after the Resurrection.

Our
Savior’s sorrow did not diminish his joy

As the power of Christ’s
Godhead did not overcome or absorb the human nature he assumed, neither did the
glory of the beatific vision (before the Resurrection) so fill his body and the
lower faculties of his soul in such a way as to rule out all suffering.

Now, it is impossible that the same
man be both perfectly sorrowful and perfectly joyful about the same thing in
the same respect. However, this is not what the Church claims regarding Christ
in his passion.

It is wholly plausible that a
single man may be both sad and happy about two different objects, or (perhaps)
even about one and the same object under two respects.

And so it was with Christ, for
he was perfectly joyful insofar as the higher part of his soul enjoyed the vision
of God which is called “beatific”; but he was deeply grieved by the Passion he
suffered. The beatific vision made him to be perfectly happy, but the suffering
of the Cross made him to be most sorrowful.

In a similar way, a man may be
relieved in finding his eldest son alive after a ship-wreck, while at the same
moment being grieved in finding his youngest son dead in the same wreck. Would
any claim that the loss of the youngest makes the father to be grieved at the
finding of the eldest? Or that the safety of the elder makes the father to be
joyful at the death of the younger? Of course not!

And, with Christ, the
distinction is even greater, for the joy was not only regarding a different
object, but was experienced in a different part of the soul – for the higher
part of his soul was joyful, while the lower part was filled with sorrow.

And thus is shown the absurdity
of those who claim that Christ’s sorrow proves that he did not know all things
and enjoy the beatific vision.

Finally, we point out that our
Savior’s perfect knowledge and the beatific vision even increased his sorrows.
Knowing all things, Christ knew the horrific nature of the sin of the Cross –
and this sin grieved him terribly.

Further, he knew of all those
who would turn away from his love and would reject the Cross and the salvation
which he offers to all. Our Lord also knew well the malice which his
executioners had, and even the malice which all men have in sinning; not merely
by way of conjecture, but by a perfect knowledge – this would grieve the Lord immensely.

Additionally, even the bodily
sufferings he endured would be greater on account of the fact that his senses
would be more active than ours. We dull our senses through sin, but Christ’s
flesh would have suffered the physical pains of the passion in the highest
degree. Still, these bodily pains are as nothing compared to the pain and
sorrow which our Lord experienced in his most holy soul.

"It was only by a special decree of God that the glory and joy of the beatific vision which so filled these higher realms of the Savior’s soul did not overflow into his soul’s lower portions as well as into his body. Such occurred perfectly only after the Resurrection." I have never heard it described exactly so, and so elegantly, but of course, I have been derelict in my reading of St. Thomas... so I'm showing my laziness ;-) You have succinctly and understandably stated one of the most mystifying Christological truths for our benefit. God bless you, Father.

Dear Father Ryan,I am very grateful for your blog. Could you please clarify for me the higher and lower parts of the soul. I may be misunderstanding the idea that the soul is spirit and has no parts so I don't understand how there is a higher or lower in space or in act. Sincerely,Alan R.